


Abode

by camichats



Series: Dictionary Prompts [44]
Category: Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Bucky Barnes & Winter Soldier are Different Personalities, Civil War (Marvel), Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Infinity Gems, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Not Cheating, background Steve/Bucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 17:33:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16288853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camichats/pseuds/camichats
Summary: Tony and Winter are together but Civil War happens, and the next time they see each other is a battle for Earth.





	Abode

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU in tiny ways that would take a while to list, so just roll with it.

Tony was curled around Winter when he woke up, jostled because he was starting to move. "Wassit?" Tony mumbled, rubbing at his eyes and propping up on his elbow because Winter was now at the edge of the bed and Tony didn't fancy following him there unless he had to. "Where you going?"

Winter glanced back at him, eyes filled with regret, and Tony's stomach sank.

"Already?"

Winter gave a short nod.

"But… you just got here." Winter had shown up literally two days ago; he wasn't supposed to leave yet.

"I know." He leaned over and kissed Tony softly, thumb stroking the skin of his neck. "But he's waking up."

Tony sighed, leaning into him for a moment, then falling back onto the bed. "Fine. Go."

Instead of leaving, Winter crawled over to him, peppering his face with gentle kisses until Tony was squeezing his eyes shut to try and stop a tear from leaking out the side of his eye-- he failed. "I would stay if I could."

Tony took a shuddering breath. "I know. I just hate this."

"It won't be forever," he reminded him. Tony nodded, and Winter gave him another kiss before getting off the bed and pulling on his clothes. He strapped the backpack on, gave Tony a lingering kiss, then left, out the door and gone like a shadow. Tony rolled onto Winter's side of the bed into the dissipating heat and pulled the blanket up over his bare shoulders to try and replace the warmth given from another human being.

* * *

Bucky and Winter were patently different. Tony could tell them apart in the blink of an eye.

The man who was brought into the building inside a glass box was Bucky. The man tearing through the compound in a blind panic was Winter. Tony heard the alert and only got to see a security feed for a moment before it was taken out of sight, but he recognized the tense set of Winter's shoulders and the way he was fighting like a caged animal-- it had been near the start of their relationship since Tony had last seen him like this, when he didn't know where he was as he woke sometimes.

He never got to see him in person, and he knew that Winter had no idea he was in the building, let alone the country, but it still hurt that he left when he was _so close_.

* * *

The man attacking him was Bucky. And Steve. God Steve was hitting him with the shield and tossing it to Bucky, and they made a great team. Tony could acknowledge, in the back of his mind, that Bucky was easily the single most important person to Steve and would have been even if he hadn't been taken out of time without the world he knew or any of his friends.

He knew it was Bucky attacking him.

But it was Winter's body so he tried to hold back.

Bucky put his metal hand on the arc reactor and started trying to crush it, and Tony panicked. He forgot that it wasn't his heart, that if something happened to it, he would no longer die. All he felt was a blind, visceral fear and he had Friday route full power to the chest piece and let out a repulsor beam.

So when Bucky's arm blew off and he stumbled to the ground, pain and a terrified disbelief on his face, all he could see was Winter.

_I'm sorry_ , he thought desperately, helmet and head jerking to the side as Steve pummeled him, HUD lighting up with red alarms of all the problems with the suit, _I'm so so sorry sweetheart_.

…Steve beat him. He brought the shield down on the faceplate and it shattered off the rest of the helmet and fell to the side, and for a moment, when Steve brought the shield up for the final blow, Tony could have sworn he was going to bring it down on his unprotected head.

He destroyed the arc reactor, and that wasn't really better.

Steve dropped the shield and helped pick a mostly unconscious Bucky off the floor, and all Tony could think was _No god please no don't take him please no I'll never see him again don't take him from me_.

* * *

Bucky felt tremulous in his own body, and after a while, he started to get the feeling that something was wrong. Something was wrong to the point that he couldn't ignore it and hope that it would get better by itself. He didn't know if it was a 'wrong' that other people felt, but he hoped to god that it wasn't. No one should feel like this.

Princess Shuri had said to come find her if he needed to, so he did, awkwardly hovering at the edge of the room, waiting for her to finish what she was doing. "Come now, colonizer, staring is creepy."

"Sorry."

"Stop apologizing and tell me why you’re here." She set aside the pliers she'd been wielding and turned to face him.

"I think something's wrong."

She frowned. "Wrong with what?"

"My- uh. Head."

"Not sure I can fix that with technology, Sergeant Barnes," she said. Not that she hadn't tried, of course, but it was a bit beyond what the current capabilities of her healing lab were since she'd focused on the purely physical.

Bucky blew out an annoyed breath, knowing that it wasn't her fault that she didn't understand but also not knowing how to explain it better. "Can you just... scan it? See if anything pops out?"

"Okay," she said, obviously humoring him, but the worst case scenario was that she was right and this was normal for someone in his position and she would pat him on the head and send him off with a lollipop. She brought him to the medical section of her lab, and a minute later, she was staring, dumbfounded at the results. "Well. You don't see this every day."

"What? What's wrong?"

"I don't know Sergeant Barnes, but I intend to find out." She hummed as she flipped through the scans that Bucky couldn't make heads nor tails of. "I'll have to bring in a few others for this, but you are free to go," she said, waving her hand at him to indicate that he could leave.

He didn't want to leave, too uncertain about his fate to be comfortable with it, but he did all the same, knowing that she didn't want him underfoot.

* * *

"What do you mean there's two brainwaves?" Steve asked, squeezing Bucky's hand, hard as he was obviously worried-- scared, even. Bucky held on just as tightly, probably not hiding his fear very well.

He didn't know everything Hydra did to him-- didn't want to know, if he was being honest-- but he'd hoped that it would be nothing more than some shellshock. "Is someone messing with his mind?"

The rogue Avengers and a few Wakandans were present for this even though Bucky would have preferred a little more privacy: just him, Steve, and however many Dora Shuri felt she needed to feel safe. He would have said something except they were all gearing up to deal with a hostile alien-- alien! What the fuck!-- force, and the safety of the world surpassed his desire to feel slightly more comfortable.

Shuri shook her head. "It's not like that. More like… a presence in the back of his head. They seem to be dormant."

"What does that mean?" he asked, clearly distressed at how helpless he felt.

"I'm not holding back information to be funny, Captain," she said. "We just don't know what's happening, and right now there are more important things to worry about than whether or not your boyfriend is perfectly adjusted after seventy years of torture."

"It's alright Stevie," he whispered, giving Steve's hand a comforting squeeze in return for his worried ones. "We'll save the world and then figure this out, yeah?"

Steve looked at him, and drug up a smile from the bottom of his stomach. "Yeah, 'course we will. And then you'll be fine."

High above Earth, on a spaceship so massive Tony was almost impressed it existed, they met the Guardians. More specifically, they met Nebula and Gamora. The three of them, with substantial help from Dr. Strange and Spiderman, managed to defeat Thanos. His body was going to crash land on Earth for some weird fucking reason that didn't follow the laws of the universe that Tony knew about, but he checked where it was going to land and it was in an uninhabited part of Wakanda, so he didn't bother trying to contact anyone and tell them. He would have, normally, but they would probably find out about it with enough time to take care of the situation, and this way Tony didn't have to try and discover a way to contact them; they weren't exactly in his address book.

Tony was slack with relief at having avoided the apocalypse of, you know, half the entire fucking universe, but Nebula and Gamora were having an argument that quickly went from heated whispers to yelling. "What's going on?" he asked tiredly.

"This wasn't enough," Nebula said, still glaring at Gamora even though she was answering Tony's question. "Thanos has too many forces for us to stop."

"That's no reason for a suicide mission," Gamora grit out. "The terrans are rallying to fight them, if we call Novacorp and tell her that we need help, she'll send it, and casualties can be kept to a minimum."

"Then give her a call real quick," Tony said, "and get us down to Earth to help."

"She won't help us without the risk to her own people," Nebula spat.

"Then Miss Orion here can call her and we can go down to Earth and start fighting."

"Sounds good to me," she growled, turning away from her sister and dragging Tony by the arm along with her.

Not wanting to fight her just to get his arm back, Tony followed along, motioning for Peter to join them-- the Guardians seemed decent enough, but he wasn't going to leave the kid with them, and that wasn't anything personal.

"Come on Rocket!" Nebula yelled, pulling Tony inside a shuttlepod.

"Come on Groot," Rocket said, heading to join them.

He paused when there was a petulant, "I am Groot.”

Tony rolled his eyes, and he got the feeling that Rocket was doing the same. "I don't care if you're thirsty, Terra has water now get on the fucking shuttle."

Another "I am Groot," followed by Groot scuffing the floor with his foot, and he followed.

Nebula sealed the door closed as soon as Groot stepped inside and wasted no time in finishing the startup sequence, pulling them off the ship and heading towards the planet with no problems.

"Where are we headed?" Peter asked because he was a good kid and real smart but not necessarily the best at keeping his mouth shut.

"Where the hell do you think?" Nebula growled.

"Just where some fighting is kid," Tony said, giving him a half smile that was more pain than happiness. "There's plenty of places to choose from."

The trip was short as far as traveling thousands of miles went, but it still took some time. Peter wandered over to Groot and Rocket, striking up a conversation that seemed to be a contest of who could insult who the best. Groot seemed to be winning, but Rocket had the look of a begrudgingly proud parent and Peter looked pretty ecstatic, so it was a win for morale if nothing else.

Tony took the seat next to Nebula, watching the emptiness of space and convincing himself that he wasn't scared shitless. There wasn't a reason to be scared anymore, because they'd killed him. Thanos wasn't hiding around the corner to make everything Tony had been afraid of come to life, it was already there. The thought should have scared him, but instead it calmed him, bringing him to a strange sort of peace with the situation. People were dying and that was hell, but at least the damage was as contained as it could be.

"Are you happy?" he asked, the words slipping out of his mouth before he registered that he'd even thought of them.

Nebula gave him a glance out of the side of her eyes.

"That Thanos is dead," he clarified. Thanos reminded him of Stane in too many ways for comfort. It was a relationship with a lot of love/hate for him even now, and he wondered if Nebula felt the same. Stane had tried to kill him a couple times, had been manipulating him for years… but he had been there for him. No matter what else, he'd taken care of the company and been a shoulder for Tony to lean on. A manipulative one, granted, but there for him all the same during rough years. But that didn't mean he hadn't been so fucking glad to see him dead.

"The universe is better without him."

"That's not an answer."

"I joined a different egomaniac moron in the hope that I could kill him."

That still wasn't an answer, technically, but Tony knew what it would be: yes, she was happy that he was dead and not even in the 'the universe is better for it' way. She was glad that he was dead because of what he did to her, and she didn't need more reason than that. Tony nodded, going back to staring out the front window or whatever the hell it was called.

Silence, for a long while. Then, "You love Gamora. What would you do if she was hurt, and someone was keeping her from you?"

"I'd cut through them," she said immediately.

Tony leaned back in the chair again, thinking. He thought about Winter, the way he moved when he was relaxed, that smile he got when Tony did something that Winter classified as 'cute'. He wanted him back. More than that, he wanted Winter to have a body and a life of his own separate of Bucky. It wasn't as simple as killing Steve and his best bud-- not that he would have even if it were an option-- but maybe this did require more force than he'd been putting it in.

His resolve strengthened. They'd land on Earth and kill Thanos's forces who didn't yet know that they'd lost, then he'd find Winter and finally help him.

* * *

Shuri hated having an audience while she was inventing, but she understood that this was a limited time engagement that she didn't have time to test before putting it into practice. That didn't make her any less aggravated though, the unwelcome audience itching at the back of her mind the entire time. A muscle in her face twitched. "Glaring will not make me work faster," she said, glancing at the rag-tag group that had decided they were best suited to join her in here despite none of them being scientists-- the one scientist the group _did_ have was currently fighting like they all should have been. This whole thing was a mess, though she did get a thrill out of working with something powerful-- and the Soul Stone was _certainly_ powerful.

While she did have a certain fondness for Sergeant Barnes, she was not of the mind that he needed an entire team of superheroes around him for support, especially since he seemed so uncomfortable with all of them around.

She growled, forcing her hands to move faster, to keep up with where her brain was running. She finished-- in record time, in her opinion-- and ran to him with the retrofitted helmet, jamming it onto his head and going back to the power source. A quick, "Ready?" was all the warning she gave before powering it on when he nodded.

They all stared at him, waiting for the change to happen, but a high pitched whine started filling the room, only to be replaced with a flash of blue so bright it was nearly white.

When she looked back, there were two people laying there, where before there had only been one. The Soul Stone was gone, absorbed by the second entity, and Shuri couldn't say with any amount of certainty what had happened to it. Whether the process itself had used the energy of the stone and sent it off into the void, or if it was now in the body of this second man. Physically, he was identical to Barnes, but as soon as he moved, it was obvious they were two entirely different people. Captain Rogers didn't seem to get that though, looking at both of them with worry. "Buck?"

One of them turned to look at him, but the other didn't, staring down at the arm Shuri had fitted the Sergeant with. He flexed his fingers, getting a feel for the new prosthetic. He glanced up, eyes immediately finding Shuri and locking on. She met his intense look, unblinking. "You made this," he stated, voice lacking the accent the Sergeant had recently been getting back.

"Yes."

He looked back at his hand, turning it over as his expression turned-- dare she say it-- wistful. "I liked the old one."

"Bucky, Hydra gave you that one," Steve said, reprimanding almost, like the man couldn't remember it.

"I do not believe that is your old friend, Rogers," Shuri said. He was smart sometimes, but fuck did she want to shove him out of her lab now. "And we should all get back out there," she said, technically a suggestion but definitely not suggesting so much as she was ordering.

The one who wasn't Bucky nodded immediately, getting to his feet and waiting to follow her lead. The rest of the Avengers or Rogues or whatever the hell they were called seemed less willing to listen, but she couldn't find it in herself to care anymore. Not-Bucky followed her out of the room easily, but not like he was lost without a handler, more like he figured that she knew what was going on more than he would be able to find out by himself.

"You know how to use a weapon?"

"Just basic ones," he answered, and Shuri felt a smirk stretch across her mouth.

"I've got a rifle for you. Basic style, you'll be fine." And if he wasn't, well, lots of people weren't fine right now and he shouldn't have lied about being able to use it.

* * *

Tony landed hard, weighed down by all his passengers. He could have taken some of the strain off of the suit by dropping them a little harder, but considering that they were about to be fighting some roided out aliens, he figured it was more important for all the people not in a metal suit to have their bodies in good condition than to keep a couple scratches off his paint job.

There were Wakandans everywhere, and they took the appearance of Tony with a blue woman, a raccoon, and a tiny ent in stride, figuring that if they were there to help there was no reason to judge.

It was a fucking brutal fight, the earth around them torn up in places and the rest covered in blood, not all of it red fortunately, and various corpses, a depressing amount of them human.

The war was already won, but the battle was up for grabs. It was pointless, stupid, but it was still happening. Knowing that the universe and even Earth would survive this wasn't enough to stop a depressing sense of inevitability from seeping into Tony's mind.

He saw Barnes out of the corner of his eye and didn't think anything of it at first, but then he did a double take. That wasn't Bucky, that was Winter. His arm wasn't the shiny silver one Tony was used to; Princess Shuri must have made him a new one.

His heart soared at seeing that he was unharmed-- for the moment at least-- but just as quickly his heart sank. Winter was here, obviously in control enough that he wasn't worried about Bucky slipping back in the middle of the fight, and he'd never reached out to contact Tony. He hadn't called him or showed up, and now he had a new arm to replace the one Tony had blown off. He blasted an overly large alien in the head and set his jaw. Winter had every right to not want to speak to him. Hell, if he was Winter, he'd do a lot worse than just not talk to him. He resolved to keep his distance in the fight to not distract him... but he didn't go too far. He wasn't going to let some fuck-off alien hurt him just because Tony was trying to give him some space.  

Gamora and her human boyfriend showed up with a goddamn army in the sky like a perfect deus ex machina, and ended the fight quickly after their arrival. The Avengers and the Guardians met up in the field for a minute, but the Guardians left to go deal with Novacorp-- except for Rocket and Groot, who were doing something with the various alien weapons they found on some of the corpses.

Normally that would have been fine, except then T'challa had to go deal with... well, the hundreds of deaths of his people, and it left just the Avengers-- and the Avengers auxiliary-- together.

Tony was the one to break the silence, to no one's surprise. Instead of commenting on the elephant in the room-- the existence of Winter _and_ Bucky in two different bodies at the exact same time-- he said to Natasha, "You dyed your hair."

"You upgraded your suit."

"Yeah. Works better this way." He wasn't going to tell her any of the details because he didn't fucking trust her anymore, but nanotech was the best and he would marry it if he could, especially since Winter was standing on the other side of their circle not looking at him.

"It looks nice," Steve said awkwardly.

"Nicer than your beard. I mean come on, Cap, really? Facial hair doesn't suit you."

Steve nodded uncomfortably, not agreeing with Tony, he just didn't know what else to do.

"Is no one going to talk about why there are two Barnes's?" Peter asked.

"Now that you mention it kid, no. We weren't going to talk about it. However since you brought it up, what the hell Rogers?" Tony motioned between Bucky and Winter. "What happened here? Last I checked, you couldn't separate two people from one body."

Wanda peered at him suspiciously. "How'd you know they were separated and not something else?"

Tony was prepared to blow off the question to the now-curious group, but Winter spoke up before he could. "We know each other."

"I don't think the- thing with his parents counts as knowing each other," Steve said nervously.

Winter shot Steve a disdainful look. "I know it doesn't." He looked at Tony, and Tony was ready to come up with some transparent excuse and jet off, but there was no recrimination in his gaze.

* * *

T'challa put them all up for the night after they made plans to help him recover. Pepper was handling things in the States; she didn't really need Tony's help, and besides how would he explain Winter to her or anyone else for that matter?

Winter hadn't explained their relationship to anyone, and Tony sure as hell wasn't going to if he could avoid it. They said they knew each other and that they weren't about to haul off and try to kill the other person, and that had been that as far as everyone who wasn't the two of them was concerned. Oh they were curious as all hell, but fortunately, they had better things to do than speculate on their relationship.

So they had separate rooms and Winter snuck into Tony's before he'd had a chance to do anything, even get dressed for bed. He stepped inside and locked the door behind him. He kissed Tony and placed a hand over his heart. "Will you make me a new arm?"

Tony frowned. "Is there something wrong with it?" he asked doubtfully. He didn't know Princess Shuri very well, but her work spoke for itself.

"It doesn't feel right," Winter said, and Tony heard 'You didn't make it'.

"Okay."

Winter pulled off his shirt. Tony was about to ask him what was going on when he saw a blue glow set into Winter's chest, previously covered by the fabric. "We match," he said softly, putting his hand back over the arc reactor.

"What is that? Is it hurting you?"

"I don't know what it is," he admitted, "but I think it's keeping me alive."

Tony took a deep, bracing breath. "Well. If nothing else it got you here."

"With you."

He nodded. "With me."

"Home."

Tony snorted to hide the wave of emotion. "Romantic."

**Author's Note:**

> Do I have an explanation for how Tony and Winter got together? Nope. But I'm on tumblr if you want to ask anyways [@cami-chats](http://cami-chats.tumblr.com)


End file.
